De beaux lendemains

The Sweet Hereafter is as tragic, sad and matter-of-fact as movies get, but it's still so very beautiful that it becomes a film that's virtually impossible to forget.

The story makes no secret of the fact what terrible tragedy will happen, right from the outset. A lesser filmmaker than Atom Egoyan would've jumped at the chance to shock the audience with the freak accident that robs the town of Sam Dent of nearly all their children, by telling the story in a linear fashion. Not Egoyan. The story is fragmented, thus enhancing the true point: This is not about the overwhelming power of loss, it is about the overwhelming power of survivor's guilt (nicely represented in Browning's poem The Pied Piper Of Hamelin, which is referred to in the movie). It's all about people who grieve not only for the ones they've lost, but also for themselves, how empty their lives have become because of their tragedies. In focussing on that point, the film refrains from manipulative sentiment (which so many others don't), and presents true and unintrusive emotion, that, in the end, despite all the terror, shines a light of hope, for the sweet hereafter is not only the peaceful afterlife, it's also the peaceful future, the continuation of life...

The performances speak for themselves. Ian Holm and Sarah Polley shine in particular, through nicely subdued and subtle acting. Polley also excels as a fantastic singer-songwriter. The songs in the movie were written and performed all by herself.

Egoyan's direction is simply masterful in its beauty, elegance and evocation.

One of the best films of the 1990s.

10 out of 10.

Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm) is a lawyer struggling with his drug addicted daughter. He's trying to convince various parents to sue the town. They lost their children when the school bus driven by Dolores Driscoll (Gabrielle Rose) gets into an accident on a snow covered road. The town is the only one with deep pockets and Mitchell will say anything to get them to sue. Nicole Burnell (Sarah Polley) is a survivor who was sexually corrupted by her father.

This movie meanders a lot. There are long flashbacks of not only the bus ride and crash but also some of the life before that day. It has an ethereal dreamlike quality about it. It has the sad moody devastation. It doesn't make it a compelling watch unless seeing the saddest people in the world is fun for you.

I've seen this film twice now, and had the same reaction both times, so it's not out of gut reaction that I label "The Sweet Hereafer" an odious piece of simple-minded garbage.

The central idea (a school bus crash) has such intrinsic emotional repercussions that I can see how most viewers are washed away in grief enough to not notice the emptiness of the conceit built around it.

As an intruding lawyer, Ian Holm is asked to give a performance of staggeringly self-conscious falseness in which his every word, movement and breath is meant to project "SOMETHING IMPORTANT". His episodic encounters with the people of the community in which the accident took place only reveals Egoyan's total condescension toward life's "little people", presenting them as simpletons who, gosh darn it, love their children and each other and turn their noses up at anything so disgusting as a dollar bill.

In a failed attempt to make at least one character two-dimensional, a subplot is slopped on about the lawyer losing touch with his own child, the most ridiculous drug-addicted banshee every put on film.

Toss in heavy-handed allegories, heart-tugging muzak and trite conclusions, and what have you got? An award-winning "masterpiece", to hear most people talk. More likely they woke up the next morning, remembered something about angelic children heading for their final bus ride, and forgot the manipulative banality of the rest.

View the first episode of Krzysztof Kieslowski's 1988 "Decalogue", which covers similar thematic ground and, in 50 short minutes, accomplishes worlds more.

3 out of 10 for nice work by actors Bruce Greenwood and Sarah Polley.

This was one of the saddest films I have ever seen. I do not mean that in bad way though. I have seen sad films that made me depressed and I usually disliked them because of this. The Sweet Hereafter is different though. It is a sad film without being manipulative and fake. The film brilliantly shows how people need to have revenge. After a bus accident where all but two are killed the people of the town, after a lawyer pushes them on, become obsessed with suing those responsible. Egoyan looks at how people can not accept that things happen by accident. The people of the town feel that someone has to pay for the pain they are feeling and in the end they are the ones to pay for it. The acting is excellent, especially Ian Holm. Once you become accustomed to the time shifts this is an incredibly rewarding film that you will always remember.

Lately I've been seeing just about every movie that someone recommends to me, and "the Sweet Hereafter" has been on quite a few of my friends' lists. I was excited about finally seeing the movie.

What I found was less compelling than I expected. None of the characters were really engaging, and perhaps that's the aim of the film. But I honestly can't understand how this movie could have made people cry. Who did they identify with? Ian Holm's character, whose grimacing and silence set my teeth on edge, and whose attitude toward the families of the accident victims was so entirely self-serving? Sarah Polley's character, who almost never displayed any spark of life? And even if I had begun to identify with one character or another, I would have been instantly put off by the trite lines that kept coming out of their mouths. "Let me direct your rage?" Give me a break.

Not to imply too much of a connection between the films, but if you want to feel the terror and rage surrounding a tragedy as though you were there living through it, see "Boys Don't Cry." The words that go unsaid in that film are worth much more than those voiced-over or spoken all too clearly in "the Sweet Hereafter."